With the trade deadline looming, February can be a stressful time for coaches and players alike.

Before the Feb. 21 deadline arrives, coaches consider moves to improve their rosters and players live with the real possibility they could be traded any day.

Denver Nuggets coach George Karl, who oversaw the 13-player Carmelo Anthony trade, is keenly aware of the pressure felt on both sides. As a former player, he lived with that pressure. Now a coach, he wields the power to make trade rumors into reality.

"There's this solid anxiety to this period of time for players," Karl said, according to The Cleveland Plain Dealer. "So, how I can calm that and make them feel like, 'Yeah, a trade could happen, but it's a small, small percentage.'"

This anxiety only heightens when a player's name is included in trade rumors or floated through the media as teams work to assume leverage. At times a players name can come up in trade talk even if the team never put him on the block.

Karl told The Plain Dealer he once had a competition with friends to see who could get an unreasonable trade published in a newspaper first.

"We make up some trade that never was proposed in 100 years and suddenly it's on ESPN," Karl said.